Bulova

 By Bruce Shawkey

As a 23-year-old immigrant from Bohemia (Czech Republic), Joseph Bulova opened a watch shop in the Maiden Lane in New York City. First he produced pocket watches and table clocks, and during the First World War the new, rapidly spreading type of wristwatches was added. The company expanded rapidly and became one of the best-known American watch manufacturers.

In 1926 the United States were accorded on the mark with the first commercial, nationally televised radio time announcement “At the tone, it's 8 P.M., B-U-L-O-V-A Bulova watch time.” Two years later, Bulova introduced the first radio clock. 1941 there was already the first television advertising with Bulova.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the company aroused interest with the first electronic wristwatch the Accutron. It was equipped with a tuning fork oscillator developed by Max Hetzel and achieved a hitherto unknown accuracy of several seconds per year. At the present time, Bulova is considered a luxury watch brand.

Some of my favorite Bulova watches and ads over the decades:

Bulova continued to find success through the quartz crisis, acquired by Loews Corporation. In 2008, Citizen Holdings bought Bulova for $250 million. Currently, Bulova is considered an upscale watch brand.

It is interesting to note that ads for Bulova watches outside the United States in the 1950s included a pronunciation of the word: